


Like a Bad Habit

by hanyuuuuu



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Grad school au because i want to, I have a lot of anger to let out, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:33:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22261888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanyuuuuu/pseuds/hanyuuuuu
Summary: Matt insisted on ordering the chemical storage cabinet in a manner known only to him, because he was a petty bitch.Mello ordered them by their Russian names, because he was equally as petty.Both of them pretended not to hear Near having a mental breakdown every time he had to find the dithiothreitol.Or, how Mello spends years of grad school trying to ignore his work and not get ignored by Matt.
Relationships: L/Yagami Light, Matt | Mail Jeevas/Mello | Mihael Keehl
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	1. I Accidentally Vaporize my Research Supervisor

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is a self indulgent vent fic because I hate biochemistry and I hate grad school. Sorry Mello, if I have to suffer through it so do you.  
> ...I have a lot of pent up anger, I’m realizing. Sorry Near, I dont actually hate you.

Mello sighed.

It was Monday morning, his life sucked ass, and his colleagues were nowhere to be seen. That wasn’t a surprise, really, but his work today required Matt’s presence and he’d prefer to be finished by lunchtime to save the afternoon for wallowing in self pity and chocolate milk. It was October, contracts were due to be renewed before the winter break, and there was really a lot to be done before Mello’s work could be called anything related to “finished”. The life of a researcher was really not easy. Mello was not particularly interested in biology or chemistry or whatever godforsaken scientific discipline this particular research group was supposed to be focusing on. When he’d been forced to decide on his major as an undergrad, he’d practically tossed a coin and went with whatever and had let his excruciatingly uneventful life carry him to where he was now: gathering data for his useless Master’s thesis which would bring about exactly zero scientific advancement and would ultimately end up gathering dust in the university library records. Not that he gave a shit. For all he cared, the stupid thing could fuck off and die already.

And yet here he was, Monday morning. He’d unfortunately not contracted a life threatening illness over the weekend and thus had to show up, to not waste his previous 5 or so years and get kicked out of the damn place. He dropped his head onto his arms and probably would have shed a few tears over the unfairness of it all, had Near not walked in and plunked himself down by his workbench. Since he’d rather die than show any weakness to anyone ever, he straightened himself out. 

“Why, good morning Near. Did you have a good weekend? Did you manage to get any work done on our proposal to keep our state-funded grant, or were you too busy doing lines of cocaine off of Matt’s ass to think about biology?” he inquired, knowing full well that the white haired loser probably spent his time off assembling action figures and robots on his white living room carpet in his white pajamas listening to some equally clean and bland Owl City or whatever. Hey, a little fun banter never seriously hurt anyone. Right?

Near gave him a look, the one that said “I know you’d love to do cocaine off Matt’s sexy ass and are deeply troubled that you had to spend the weekend drinking alone instead of playing, like, League of Legends with him while you suck his dick all at the same time and you’re just projecting your insecurity and annoyance onto me, an innocent young man”. He didn’t actually say anything, yet the look on his face spoke a thousand words. Mello knows this because he’s a scorpio at heart or something and knows exactly how to read people and every thought of theirs, so obviously he could interpret Near’s dead fish eye stare perfectly. 

Near shoved some of the aforementioned documents over, looking extremely enthusiastic about the whole thing. Mello, equally as enthusiastic, shoved them into his binder and made a mental note to look over them later. Or something.

Anyway. He cleared his throat to bring his wandering thoughts back to the present and away from far too close to Matt’s ass for a Monday morning. He had multiple experiments to wrap up and start on and really needed Matt to show up for any of that to happen. The bitch ass of a supervisor Yagami who ran the place in the professor’s stead had decided they only needed one person trained in operating the stupid fancy equipment and had only sent Matt (by far the most expendable person, in Mello’s eyes) to the training to get the license. Now Mello needed Matt to work it for his experiment, the same Matt who was already 20 minutes late and Mello was really going to let him have it for not being able to show up even though they’d discussed this, multiple times.

Yagami walked into the lab, looking like shit, hungover and out for blood. He was perpetually grumpy and had never removed the stick from up his ass as far as anyone could tell. He hounded Mello for his finished papers and manuals and results and whatnot and Mello was fucking tired of answering to some dweeb in a tan suit and jacket who looked like he wouldn’t know fashion if it hit him in the face. Troubling as it was, Mello still had to report to him in the weekly group meetings and answer to his desires for more research, lower costs, oh and would someone please get around to yelling at the lab tech (poor, useless Matsuda) for screwing up another autoclave, please and thank you. Yagami answered to Professor Lawliet who rarely left his office, and Lawliet answered to the section supervisor who had some weird fucking name, like Bradley or Brent or something. No one was really sure if the man existed or not. Near, however, swore up and down that he’d been called to his office once, which he found empty, but heard some scrabbling under the desk and saw something big and dark and with glowing red eyes, obviously, because that’s how those things work. In any case, he had been practically hysterical for a while after the incident (as hysterical as he can get, anyway, the freak) and had developed a strong aversion to anything jam or strawberry related. 

Yagami made a beeline straight for Mello’s bench.

“Good morning. I don’t suppose you’ll have your results typed up anytime soon for this batch of samples? We could really use all the data we have to ensure we get grant funding for next semester, you know. If that’s not possible, I can arrange for you to teach some of Professor Lawliet’s classes because we all know you fucking hate doing that and I’d fucking hate for you to do something that you hate doing so can you please fucking get a move on and present some results already? Thank you”. 

Spitting image of professionalism, that man was.

He spun around on his fancy-ass heels and stalked out of the room, ignoring Near, whom he considered an angel child who could do no wrong. Probably because they shared about 5% humanity between the two of them and robots can’t really hate each other can they?

Mello shook himself and figured he should actually get to work, or else he’d spend the entire night here breathing in the smell of chemicals and E. coli and he’d rather die, really, but duty called and he dragged his sorry ass over to the lab computer to print out some manuals on how not to hurt the feelings of your fragile little cells and grow them into healthy individuals with a dog and a house with a nice garden and a beautiful wife. 

Gathering his materials, he went to search for some reagents and prayed to every god known to man they hadn’t run out yet. He wasn’t sure if anyone kept track of these things, even though that should be Matsuda’s job, the incompetent fool. 

Matt insisted on ordering the chemical storage cabinet in a manner known only to him, because he was a petty bitch. 

Mello ordered them by their Russian names, because he was equally as petty.

Both of them pretended not to hear Near having a mental breakdown every time he had to find the dithiothreitol.


	2. Three Lab Enemies Knit the Labcoat of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late night library hours- who doesn't love the thrill of starting a paper 4 hours before the deadline is due?

The library was empty. It was cold and dark, just like Mello had wanted because sometimes, you just have to wallow in your self pity in a fitting environment. On Friday night, the absolute last thing he wanted was to spend hours finishing up his paper for his microbiology, but he had to get it done somehow before the deadline at 11 freakin’ PM. Sure, he’d left it to the last minute, but there had been a lot to do and it wasn’t like Mello was jumping for joy to explore microbes and their metabolism. He actually considered this part of his winning strategy: to wait for everyone else to fuck off and enjoy their Friday so he could have some peace and quiet to suffer by himself. 

Mello was a strong believer in the idea that his best work was done in absolute silence, no moving objects around- he’d avoided working in the library ever since his first year at university. However, now he needed the school’s only copy of the advanced textbook since no researchers had bothered to put their papers for free on Google, thanks a lot, capitalism. 

Of course, since he’d spent the day hoping to have an empty library, upon entering the computer room, he saw his favorite person in the whole wide world, sitting right in the middle of the row, notebooks spread out neatly in front of him. 

Great. Fucking great. Just what he needed- an evening with fucking Near, who would most definitely be laughing at him in his head the whole time cause Mello fucking sucked at microbiology and couldn’t tell gram positive from gram negative to save his life. 

Doing his best to avoid looking in his general direction, he threw his shit as far away as he could get from him and slammed his textbook down. 

“Hello to you too, Mello. It’s a wonderful night, isn't it? I’m so glad to see you and that completely friendly, welcoming aura you give off. You’ve really made me feel much less stressed now that you're here”. Mello responded with a piercing glare and turned away. The snarky little shit made his blood boil, but he had been here first so Mello just had to bear it and hope he’d shut up soon. He had known that Near was in his class, but didn’t think that Near was the type of person to leave an essay to the last minute. Not that he was either, but Yagami seemed to think the lab work was of utmost importance and he’d had to finish up two weeks of work in one, which had barely left time for sleeping or eating. Well, now that he thought about it, Near had probably had to go through the same shit and they were now left in the same situation. Mello supposed he could turn his icy cold aura down a notch or two. 

Once the computer, god bless its aging soul, had finally managed to log him in after ten minutes of whirring and clunking, Mello pulled up his pitifully small Google Doc and settled down to work. 

After an hour, the room had settled into a peaceful silence- both men were concentrating, Mello flipping through his textbook and Near ruffling through some articles that only god knew how he’d gotten his hands on- Mello assumed a combination of hacking some online research database and straight up begging some poor researcher from like, Belgium for a copy of the work. 

Because nothing good ever, ever, ever lasts, the door slammed open and footsteps dragged over the carpet. Matt’s distinctive odor of nicotine, weed, and overpriced cologne preceded him and Mello groaned internally as Matt threw himself into the seat right next to Mello’s. 

“Hey bro, what's up? You got a pen I can borrow? Oh shit is that the textbook? D’you mind if I have a look at it? I really meant to start this paper earlier but I got really sick and this new in-game event just started and I really had to play it for a long time, couldn’t even leave my computer, it was really tough, got hand cramps from pressing QWER too often, you know? And then…” he slowly trailed off as he realized Mello’s eyes had glazed over, not really hearing a word Matt said. 

For his part, Mello’s internal conflict was raging- because God, Matt was hot but was he ever fucking annoying. Near wasn’t even bothering to hide the annoyance on his face as he looked at the redhead, and Mello just waved his hand in the general direction of Matt and the book and hoped he’d shut up quickly. 

The next few minutes passed uneventfully. As weird as it was, Mello was starting to feel some sort of kinship with Near over their mutual annoyance with Matt, and he wasn’t the least bit happy about it. All this time, Near had been his mortal enemy in the lab- his results always one bit better than Mello’s, and it pissed him off to no end. His struggle to overtake Near had never gotten him anywhere, and he’d thought that he had absolutely no capacity to empathize with the guy. 

Matt was a different story- he was right at the bottom of the hierarchy, with shitty results and shitty data and the man didn’t appear to give a single fuck about any of it. Just as well, as Yagami was thus always too preoccupied arguing with Matt to give Mello any grief about his own bad results. 

Sure, Matt was smart in his own way- his ideas often worked and produced unexpected results, allowing him to contribute well in the lab. His biggest flaws were his lazy personality and his general unkempt appearance. 

As much as Mello hated to admit it, he made the lab more lively. Near wasn’t particularly talkative and no one else was around much otherwise. Once Matt had actually started working, the atmosphere improved overall. 

Matt was also hot. Mello tried not to let it get to him, but some days there really wasn’t much to do while waiting for endless experiments to finish and Matt could be very distracting. Mello had no time for relationships and had shit to get done and could not afford to let Matt distract him, goddammit. 

A loud groan disrupted his off-topic thoughts. Matt slumped over his notebook, running his fingers through his hair and sighing loudly. Over to their left, Near looked like a put-out kitten at having his great, ultra-intelligent thoughts interrupted. 

“Mello, dude, I just can't figure out what else to write about, I'm not even close to the word limit and there is literally nothing else to write about, oh my god. Microorganisms are fucking tiny, how can something no one can even fucking see have enough information for 4,000 words!?”

“Y’know, Matt”, came from over to their left, and both men turned in surprise to find Near speaking to them, “you’re supposed to compare multiple species, not just one…”. Near gave what he probably thought was a meaningful look to the redhead and got up, gathering his materials and leaving the room. Mello just shrugged and turned back to his work. It was almost done and he wanted to get back to his place before it started raining in earnest. 

Matt had eventually started working again, and Mello was nearly done. After one final (hurried and distracted) proofreading, he uploaded the document to the course webpage and stretched back, satisfied. Now he was finally free for a weekend of doing… well, nothing. Peering over Matt’s shoulder, he tried to read whatever masterpiece the redhead was composing and snorted. The dumbass really had taken Near’s advice to heart and was laying out an extensive comparison of about 20 different species- exactly what some poor underpaid professor would want to spend his weekend reading.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing much… just judging your common sense. Do you really think you’ll get a decent grade with that mess?” 

The redhead grinned impishly and fuck, how was it possible for one unwashed scrawny gamer dude to look that hot? Mello closed his eyes to regain his composure and stood up abruptly. 

“Hey Mello! Man, don’t leave me here! I swear this place is fucking haunted and shit, you can’t do that to a fellow labmate! Lab bros before hoes right? Mic-bro-bes before Mic-hoes, am I right? Come on!” 

“You really, really should never attempt to come up with your own puns ever again, Matt. If I didn’t want to stay before, I want to stay even less now. Fuck off and finish it by yourself, okay?”

Fucking hell. Matt had taken advantage of Mello often enough- he asked for help in the lab nearly every week, and Mello was a pathetic excuse for a functional human being and couldn’t say no to Matt, especially when asked nicely. Plus, he was pretty sure it fueled his superiority complex and all around made him feel smart and important when he managed to help Matt get his shit together. But today, the last thing he wanted to do was spend more time in the company of other people, no matter how hot they might be. 

“Sorry man, I really have a lot to get done tonight”... A boldfaced lie. “Any other time, you know I’d love to help, but tonight is just bad timing”. Translated from polite, workplace language to Mello-speak, that meant “Fuck off, I am going home to eat pizza, antagonize Near on twitter, and pass out on my couch, bye”. 

He walked out of the room, ignoring Matt’s anguished cries for help, feeling not even the least bit sorry for him. 

Fuck, it really was dark out here- since it was after 10 p.m., the automatic lights had switched off. No, he was not running for the elevator because he was scared, he was power walking at a healthy speed for, y’know, health purposes. A man had to keep in shape somehow, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this chapter in my lab with my labmates going "wow are you already writing your thesis? wow you are so diligent" like yup. diligent and organized, thats me. 
> 
> i hope you like the new chapter! 
> 
> the work is heavily inspired by my own depressing (under)grad experiences and the chapter titles are adapted from a certain great literary masterpiece.


End file.
